Delicate
by Saru Wolfe
Summary: Starscream leads a team of Vehicons into the arctic, where they're stranded. Some fare better than others. An SG version of 'Scrapheap.'


Tril knew that there might be a problem when the Seekers stopped talking.

The team had been stranded on one of the planet's poles for a while now, and the three Seekers had spent the whole time complaining about the cold, theorizing about the lack of comm signal, and arguing about energon levels and how long it would take one of them to fly back to the _Nemesis_. Even Axel didn't talk as much as they did, and he was their surveillance bot. He was still muttering to himself as he alternately glared upward and drove to a new spot looking for a signal point.

But the Seekers were quiet, Commander Starscream included. And that didn't seem like a good thing.

Tril turned this way and that to scan the horizon again. Their entire reason for being here was because someone had recovered a crashed pod, so command had sent them out to scan the area for anything else before the Autobots picked up any funny signals and got to it. It didn't look like they'd had to worry about that; if the Autobots were going to show up, they would have been here by now. They moved fast.

Tril bashed his arms together to knock off some of the frost. "You okay?" he asked one of the Seekers tentatively.

"It's fragging _cold_," was all he got out of Helix.

It _was_ pretty cold, but nothing that would do anything to a Cybertronian yet. Tril felt fine, and it wasn't just because as the only tanker, he was the biggest. The other grounders didn't seem bothered, either, except by the mysterious comm failure.

Axel flung snow everywhere when he revved back over to their group. He flipped into his proto form in front of the trio of huddling Seekers. They were standing close with their wings pulled back so that the wingtips nearly touched.

"I've got bad news, sir," Axel announced.

"What _now_?" Commander Starscream hissed.

"Our comms work just fine."

The commander's shoulders angled up and up as he spread his hands to gesture to their general predicament. "_Really_," he ground out.

"Yes, sir. It's not _us_. It's the _Nemesis_. They're just not receiving."

The commander paused. "What do you mean?"

Axel pointed away in frustration. "I mean our equipment works just fine, sir! We're not even _jammed_! Something's wrong with the comms on the ship-or no one's there to pick up."

Tril wondered why Axel was so worked up, but then he remembered that Axel reported to Soundwave. And Soundwave _always_ picked up. Sometimes when you didn't want him to.

Commander Starscream snarled wordlessly. "Brilliant. They send us to a frozen wasteland and _leave_ us here." He eyed Helix, who had been the loudest about insisting that he could fly a message back. "Where is the nearest outpost?"

Axel took a minute. His shoulders fell when he finally pulled it up on the datapad. "Almost six thousand kliks, sir."

"Contact them. See if _they_ can reach the _Nemesis_."

The commander wrapped his arms around himself and fell silent again while Axel drove off to make the call. Tril sidled over to Avi. "How bad is it?" the tanker rumbled quietly.

Avi glanced at the commander and answered in a barely audible voice. "System failure if our core temperatures get too low." He shifted slowly. "The wings aren't helping."

"Oh." Tril hadn't thought about that, but all three sets of wings were absolutely frosted over. Helix and Avi had about the same body type as the regular grounders, but the grounders didn't have to deal with their energon flow cooling down as it passed through wings.

"Command isn't answering for the outpost, either, sir," Axel called as he returned. "Do you want me to ask if they have Seekers to deploy?"

"They don't," Commander Starscream grumbled. "There are no Seekers assigned to the mines at the moment."

"And it's not like they have ground bridge capability," Axel continued, though it sounded as if he were talking to himself. "All of that is run via-"

"Via the _Nemesis_, yes, I know."

"I can make it to the outpost, sir, no problem," Helix volunteered instantly. "From there I can fly to the _Nemesis_."

Avi hesitated. "I don't know. Six thousand kliks?"

Commander Starscream glowered at Helix. "Perhaps if you were fully fueled and didn't have to battle this blasted cold."

"I think flying might—" Helix leapt and transformed into jet mode—and then he flipped right back into his proto form and tumbled to the ground with a buzzing string of phrases that Tril personally would not have used in front of a commanding officer. He concluded with, "_Augh_."

The commander prodded the Seeker's torso and pointed at the ground. "Stay _here_."

"Yes, sir," Helix managed.

"Sir? We should find shelter," Avi insisted. "If Helix can't even transform safely..."

Commander Starscream watched him narrowly.

"Uh... it's probably really bad," Avi finished lamely. He couldn't be too medically savvy in front of his commander.

Commander Starscream seemed to deflate a little where he stood. "Hmm." He pointed at the four grounders, including Tril. "Find someplace protected where we can all fit. I do _not_ intend to freeze into a scrap pile here."

Tril set out with Axel, Vin, and Winder. Tril had no problem tracking through the snow and ice in his alt mode. Vin started leading them toward a likely-looking outcropping. They fanned out, but not too far. The land was mostly flat here.

"Can't believe the Seekers need us to do scouting," Winder said.

Axel snorted. "Fastest and fanciest in the ranks. That's what they keep saying, anyway."

"But not the best," Vin assured them from up front. "Tighten up; I think I see a cave."

Tril wouldn't have called it a cave, exactly, but it was sheltered from the wind on two sides and it was big enough for all of them. Tril stayed there while the others went back to fetch the Seekers. He walked the edges and nudged the sides, but it seemed solid. Hopefully this would help until the _Nemesis_ could get back on the comm network and bridge them back.

And they needed to hurry. Tril fidgeted as he watched Commander Starscream and his Seekers trudge shakily and uncharacteristically slowly toward him. Axel kept starting to motion for them to hurry up. Vin and Winder exchanged a glance.

Tril was so busy watching them approach that at first he didn't notice the creaking chill in his hands. He frowned at it when he did. It was definitely too cold.

"Maybe we should make a barrier," he suggested to Vin when they arrived.

Vin stared blankly at him for a moment but then put it together. "Of course. Commander?"

Commander Starscream grunted, optics not entirely focused on Vin. Vin gestured to the other grounders, and instead of waiting for permission, they gently herded the Seekers to the back corner of their shelter and formed a wall in front of them. Tril flared out his armor plating to cover more area.

"What do you think happened?" he asked.

"Some kind of technical malfunction, I guess," Axel replied.

"Or some scraphead broke the equipment," Winder suggested. He elbowed Tril. "Your buddies trip on any cables lately?"

"Seeker antics gone wrong," Vin put in.

Axel laughed. "Sim and Recoil are still arguing over whose comm shift it is."

"Rogue science experiment."

"The kids crashed the mainframe."

"Someone hung up on Lord Megatron."

Even Tril laughed at that one. It was quiet after that, though. Tril couldn't really look behind him without exposing the Seekers to the wind, so he just asked, "Still with us, Commander?"

He heard sharp venting and then, "Mm."

Vin glanced at the Seekers and resumed staring out into the landscape. Axel was tapping his leg and muttering under his breath. It just kept getting colder.

A green flash lit up half a klik away, and a ground bridge formed. "Is that ours?" Tril asked hopefully.

Five Seekers jetted out in single file.

"It's ours!" Vin crowed.

"_Get down_!" one of the airborne Seekers bellowed. "Scraplets incoming!"

"_Scraplets_?" shrieked Commander Starscream from behind Tril.

Sure enough, something came out of the ground bridge after the Seekers-hundreds of tiny forms, none of them friendly. They paused, bunching up into a cloud, and then the scraplets descended on the cornered team.

"Get down, they said _get down_!" Commander Starscream yelped.

But getting down wouldn't have done any good. They had nowhere to go, backed up in this little crevice like they were. The only thing Tril could think to do was shift out and over so he covered the center and set up his armor plating as the broadest shield he could manage, and that was what he did. Vin and Winder took up positions on either side of him and started firing.

When the first tiny metal form hit his shield, Tril winced. And then they rained down on him, rolling over his shoulders and bouncing off him in all directions, and it only took a few of them to tear up even a tanker—

And nothing happened.

Tril peered out over his shield. The snow was littered with unmoving scraplets. He turned around. The Seekers were pressed flat against the rock face, but they were whole. Everyone was all right, except for the scraplets.

"Frozen," the commander commented, cracking one into pieces under his heel. Tril cautiously straightened until he was standing normally, and still none of the scraplets moved. They had all frozen to death, just like that.

The Seekers fresh off the ship landed in front of them, still practically in formation. "Commander Starscream!" one of them called.

"Yes, I'm back here," he grumbled. He looked as though he could barely stand, let alone walk, but the Seekers still looked relieved. "Can we _now_ return to the _Nemesis_?"

The journey to the ground bridge was slow, but the mood was lighter than it had been for the entire mission. Two of the healthier Seekers supported Commander Starscream by standing too close for him to avoid leaning on them, Winder held Helix up, and Tril helped Avi. They would all be going straight to the med bay.

"So _which_ corps is the most important and useful?" Winder was asking.

Helix suggested something unfriendly.

"Can't hear you over this freezing wind."

"He looks heavy, Winder," Axel added. "Aren't you tired from doing all the work this mission?"

"Like standing around?" Avi grunted.

"You guys need to speak up. Must be the noise of walking on all these scraplets we saved you from."

"That wasn't you, that was the cold!"

"Just admit that we saved your afts—"

Personally, Tril was just glad when the light of the ground bridge faded and they were all safely back on board the _Nemesis_.


End file.
